Kean University president survives a crucible of controversies

Kean President Dawood Farahi, left, walking across campus of Kean University, following a year of turmoil over accreditation issues, the probation of the school's sports teams, and a resume scandal.Ed Murray/The Star-Ledger

UNION TOWNSHIP — Kean University has spent much of the past year dogged by controversy.

Yet its veteran president, Dawood Farahi, has not only weathered the storms, but gotten the strong backing of his board of trustees.

Last April, for example, all 13 of the university’s NCAA Division III athletic teams were put on probation for four years after disclosures that academic classes were invented and grades were fudged to benefit basketball players.

Three months later, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, Kean’s accrediting agency, put the school on probation for numerous violations of academic and ethical rules. If Kean failed to make changes, it could have lost its accreditation and been forced to shut down.

RELATED COVERAGE

The accreditation crisis contributed to Kean canceling hundreds of classes this semester after enrollment numbers plummeted nearly 7 percent. Overall enrollment dropped to 14,096 this semester, with nearly 1,000 fewer students registering for spring classes, according to campus records.

Farahi was also the focus of a faculty-sparked investigation by Kean’s board of trustees over charges he seriously misrepresented his academic credentials on his résumé — mistakes he attributed to unnamed members of his staff.

But Middle States eventually reaffirmed Kean’s accreditation and Farahi survived a no-confidence vote by the faculty. In February, a badly split Kean board of trustees voted 7-4 to keep Farahi despite his résumé controversy.

After the vote, several new trustees were named, including one to replace a board member who resigned in the wake of the résumé vote.

Farahi said despite the controversy Kean has improved greatly under his watch.

“You have to look at what’s been achieved,” he said. “Today I get more National Science Foundation grants than ever before, more NIH (National Institutes of Health) grants than ever before. As part of this transformation, there has been pain. There have been disagreements.”

The university has its roots in Newark, where it opened in 1855 as a teacher training school. It became New Jersey State Teachers College in 1937 and eventually left Newark in 1958, settling on a tract of land in a then-sparsely populated section of suburban Union Township that once served as the country estate of the Kean family.

The school adopted the family’s name and became Kean College in 1973.

The once-small teachers college grew into one of the state’s largest public four-year universities, gaining a reputation as a campus that welcomed first generation college students and those without means, looking for an affordable education. A destination for many of the state’s low-income, minority and urban students, more than 40 percent of Kean’s undergraduate class is African-American or Hispanic — making it one of the most diverse campuses in New Jersey, according to data filed with the state. More than 40 percent also receive Pell grants, the federal financial aid awards for low-income students.

But by the 1980s Kean was struggling amid underfunding and a lack of leadership.
“It had deteriorated to the point it was an embarrassment to the state of New Jersey,” said Darryl Greer, the former head of the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities. “Kean was kind of forgotten as a college.”

WORKED HIS WAY UP

By the time Farahi took over as president in 2003, the university had started to turn itself around. Farahi arrived in the United States from his native Afghanistan as a college student in the early 1970s speaking no English. He cleaned offices to earn money and eventually earned a doctorate from the University of Kansas and his U.S. citizenship.

CONNECT WITH US

On mobile or desktop:

And check out our redesigned mobile site by visiting NJ.com from any mobile browser.

Farahi spent 20 years at Kean, working his way up from professor to head of the public administration department. As the new head of Kean, he helped build up and beautify the aging campus while overhauling the academic departments and demanding professors spend more time in their offices. Farahi, who once headed Kean’s faculty senate, quickly developed a reputation for clashing with his former colleagues on the faculty in his zeal to implement changes.

“With all of the progress, there has been a continuing controversy over methods,” said Greer, who now heads a higher education institute at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. “It does take a toll on the president … and people who care about the university.”

Farahi said the university is better off now than it was 10 years ago. “We raised the four-year graduation rate of this university by almost 25 percent,” he said.

However, that graduation rate remains one of the lowest among New Jersey’s four-year colleges, with less than a quarter of students graduating on time and only about half graduating in six years. Montclair State, which is slightly larger than Kean, graduates about 35 percent of its students in four years and 62 percent in six years.

James Castiglione, who heads the faculty union at Kean and is one of Farahi’s fiercest critics, added that the average SAT score for Kean freshmen remains stuck below 1,000 for reading and math, which is nearly 200 points less than Rutgers, according to state statistics. “We’re talking about bringing in students who need more support, not less,” Castiglione said.

In September, the Kean board of trustees surprised the campus by extending the president’s $293,550-a-year employment contract to 2018.

Farahi also remains eligible to receive an additional $200,000 retention bonus due in July.